"Ah.....I am Fucked."

The thralls Monica had knocked out with her lightning strike were no longer lying still.

They were twitching, then crawling—then sprinting toward me like wild beasts, their eyes glowing red, arms stretched out like claws.

One had half a face burned off. Another's leg dragged uselessly behind him, but even that didn't stop them.

I had no other way than to fight.

The terrified Monica tried to help me, but the moment she tried to exit the barrier, a similar type of reaction happened, and she was rejected.

It was as if she was trapped insude that barrier.

"Dorian, look out!", she screamed at the top of her lungs, as a new of the thralls lunges at me, thinking himself as a predator.

Little did he know that I am not like Alicia.

I unsheathed the Broken Sword Of Ceaser, the most effective one against dark mana type creatures like these thralls, and plunged the broken end of the sword through it's neck.

Blood splattered everywhere, shrieking sounds erupted from the remaining thralls.

It was an act of desperation.

Upon seeing that I was no like nger an enemy they could underestimate, they gave a short gnal to the entire army to turn against me.

Even the other thralls who were busy trying to crack the barrier, turned and moved towards me like maniacs.

It was time for me to take this seriously, as I would be chewed to my bones, if this many attack me all at once.

I had bought a skill for this exact moment.

Shadow step.

I can move within 5 meters of radius from my original position in any direction, and it has a cooldown period of 30 seconds.

The moment I activated it, sparks of electric mana, erupted around me.

I had practices this skill so many times, that it was etched completely in my muscle memory.

The key was to find out a pathway, devoid of any obstacles.

The pathway, is to be 5 meters , and it can be either straight line or zig zag, the pattern doesn't matter much.

The moment the skill activated, my body felt weightless—like my feet no longer belonged to the ground.

In an instant, I vanished from the spot.

To the thralls, it must've looked like I blinked out of existence.

To me, it was like slipping through a narrow crack in space itself, weaving between time and breath.

I reappeared five meters away, behind a crumbled stone wall, half-covered in moss and blood.

The sudden stop made my knees buckle slightly, but I regained balance fast.

Behind me, the place I had stood just moments ago was crushed by a swarm of claws and broken limbs.

They were feral. Too many. And too fast.

Thirty seconds till I could use ShadowStep again.

That meant surviving this half-minute.

I pressed my back against the stone wall, panting, fingers clenched tight around the Broken Sword of Caesar.

Every breath sounded louder.

Every second dragged like a year.

After that, it was pure timing.

I put my sword in front of me, waiting for impact, but in front of me, the thralls I had cut down shivered , and rejoined the body parts.

The sword in my hand trembled slightly—not from fear, but from how tightly I gripped it.

I stared in disbelief as the severed limbs of the fallen thralls began inching back toward each other, twitching and squirming like worms in the mud.

Arms crawled over shattered cobblestones. A head rolled, then floated unnaturally into the air. Bones snapped in wrong directions and fused again—no longer in the human shape they once were.

A leg where an arm should be. A jaw fused into a ribcage. Fingers sprouting from a shoulder like claws. The whole thing pulsed as if breathing, even though it shouldn't.

This wasn't regeneration. This was something worse—dark fusion, a twisted form of necrocraft. It turned corpses into something that only resembled life.

The creature let out a noise—no, a collection of noises. Groaning. Clicking. Screaming.

Then it charged.

My thoughts froze for a moment.

This isn't a battle I can win like this. Not with slashes. Not with skill cooldowns. Not with panic.

I took a step back, my heel brushing against loose gravel.

If they keep fusing, if they keep rising again and again… I'll die here.

A never-ending cycle of rot.

They were like a curse that fed on my failure, my hesitation.

No. Enough.

I closed my eyes. My mind went inward.

There is only one thing, I could think of here.

Unfortunately, I couldn't have Monica help me here, cause she couldn't get outside the barrier.

So, the option I had was clear.

The mana technique of Valen family.

The Crimson Pact Arts.

I have to use that.

Now, there are two main questions.

Would it work on this many number of thralls at once?

And what would I have to sacrifice to propose the choices to them?

The answer to the first question is yes, probably.

Because, according to the fundamentals of the technique, it can be applied to any number of people you want, as long as they are in your attack range and have lesser amount of mana than you, the applier.

And, of course, I have more mana than these thralls, and they are all in my attack range too.

After sacrificing one of my most precious belonging, two choices would be presented to the thralls.

As the thralls have no common sense, or even consciousness, they would not be able to choose anything at all, being trapped in the choices for as long as I want.

The problem was what would I have to offer for the sacrifice to work.

What's the most precious thing I have right now?

What do I even have that's precious?

The majority of things are just tools to me.

Tools to achieve the greater goal.

There is not a single thing I cherish, not a single human I love, not even one.

I thought hard, as beads of sweat trickled down my forehead.

If there was one thing that would be worth sacrificing, that would be my other chakra.

But, if that's closed, I would die instantly, out of mana outburst.

Then, the answer was clear.

The only thing I feel would be if the equivalent value, would be my memory.

Or, more precisely, a fragment of it.

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Author's Note :

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